Words, Numbers, Rationality: The effect of accounting systems and language on economic and business decision-making

Friday 8 November 2013: Thet Win Aung Boardroom, RU Student Union

This interdisciplinary workshop, sponsored by the Centre for Economic History and the Economic History Society, will explore how, through the ages, language and recording systems employed at the time influenced concepts of economic rationality.

My name is Mariana Gomes Beirão, I’m Portuguese, 21, and I am currently doing a 3 month Erasmus internship in the Ure Museum as part of my MA in Ancient History, which I will defend next year. I have a degree in Languages, literatures and cultures with a major in English and minor in Italian. While doing my degree I discovered my fascination for classics mainly due to one of my Professors’ passion for his job. Rodrigo Furtado greatly influenced and impressed me to the point of, inadvertedly, entirely changing my course of studies. I began taking optional lectures and saw that they interested me more than my mandatory ones. I knew then I had to alter my path.

Moreover, before starting university I applied for an integrated masters’ in the Portuguese Army and was accepted. In my first year I sustained and injury to my knee and was forced to abandon my military career. At first I was devastated yet now it seems clear that the Moirae did their thing and everything fell into place. I find interest in learning about people long dead instead of being the one doing the killing.

Furthermore, my former summer jobs include working as a security guard in a golf resort, as a client liaison for a holiday rental company and for the past 3 years I’ve been teaching Portuguese as a foreign language to British ex-pats living in Portugal (to get a bit extra for the tuition). Finally, the least interesting aspects (not that any of the previous ones were particularly fascinating):

Firstly, I am a very active person, proof of that is that my fiancée owns the gym I go to (which is where we met). I enjoy running, doing gymnastics and kickboxing. Secondly, I love animals, especially horses, once again the fates had it all sorted as my soon to be husband has a few specimen of my favourite animal. Thirdly, I possess a PS3 and I proudly call myself a gamer. Lastly, I have failed to become a vegetarian due to the fact that Portugal isn’t very keen on rabbit food as almost everything has at least a pig’s internal organ in it.

The Department is pleased to welcome Adalberto Ottati, doctoral student at the University of Rome, La Sapienza & Junior Researcher at the Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica, Tarragona (ICAC). Adalberto will be visiting our Department for the whole spring term as part of the Erasmus exchange programme we established with ICAC last year.

During his stay, Adalberto will continue his research on the historical, architectonical, and artistic aspects of a section of Hadrian’s Villa that is not known very well: the so-called “Accademia”. This complex is made by different buildings which stand out for their uniqueness, both in terms of style and structure: the alternating of straight and curved lines; the mixing of original architecture and classical style; and the use of artificial and natural compositions to create idyllic landscapes as background to the architecture.

Scholars have traditionally identified the Accademia complex as the emperor’s summer residence, but the most recent studies tend to interpret it instead as a palatial area reserved to the empress Vibia Sabina. Adalberto’s PhD thesis focuses on largely new archaeological evidence comprising both statuary and architectonic finds, emerged in recent and ongoing archaeological investigations at Hadrian’s Villa, which he has co-directed since 2003.

As part of the new Erasmus teaching exchange established last year with the Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica (ICAC) in Tarragona (Spain), Dr Annalisa Marzano gave a series of MA lectures at ICAC to students enrolled on the Classical Archaeology and Ancient History programme.

Dr Marzano’s four lectures on villas, settlement, and society in ancient central Italy featured as part of the intensive 8th International Seminar in Classical Archaeology (Jan. 31 – Feb. 1, 2012) devoted to Rural Settlements and the Transformation of the Landscape in Antiquity. The teaching programme featured also lectures on landscape archaeology, topography, palaeobotany, etc. given by researchers and professors from various Spanish universities and museums.

Dr Marzano had several meetings with colleagues from ICAC and other Spanish universities to explore new, or enhance existing, exchanges and research networks, especially for postgraduate students.

In May 2012 Dr Jesús Carruesco from ICAC will be visiting Reading under the Erasmus staff exchange scheme. Dr Carruesco’s research covers a wide range of topics spanning from Philology to Cultural Anthropology of the Ancient World. His main area of expertise is Archaic and Classical Greece, with a special focus on religion and modes of performance (social, ritual, and literary). We look forward to hearing his seminars in the spring!